Pseudodoxia epidemica: or, enquiries into very many received tenents, and commonly presumed truths / By Thomas Brown, dr. of physick.

  • Thomas Browne
Date:
1658
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Pseudodoxia epidemica: or, enquiries into very many received tenents, and commonly presumed truths / By Thomas Brown, dr. of physick. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    11/360
    ADDER. £Ould Truth difpenfe, we could be content, ‘ with Plato, that Knowledge. were but Re- membrance; that Intellectual acquifition sek were but reminifcential evocation, and'new Imprefsions but the colourifhing of old ftamps which ftood pale in the foul before. For what is 'worle, knowledge is made by oblivion, and to purchafe 'aclear and warrantable body of Truth, we muft forget and part with much we know. Our tender Enquiries taking up Learning at large, and together with true and laflured notions, receiving many, wherein our reviewing | judgements do find no fatisfaction.And therefore in this | Encyclopedie and round of Knowledge, like the great and |exemplary Wheels of Heaven, we muft obferve two | Circles : that while we are daily carried about, and whirled on bythe fwing and raptof the one, we may maintain a natural and proper courfe, in the {low and fober wheel of the other.And this we fhall more readily erform; if we timely furvey our knowledge,impartial- ly fingling out thofe encroachments, which junior com- pliance and popular credulity hath admitted. Whereof-at prefent we have endeavoured a long and ferious Advi/o ; propofing not only a large and copious Lift, but from experience and reafon attempting their decifions. And firft we crave exceeding pardon in the audacity of the Attempt;humbly acknowledging a work of fuch concernment unto truth, and difficulty in it felf,did well deferve the conjunction of many heads. And furely more adventageots had it been unto Truth, to have fallen in- A2 to f | : | : | | | | | | | | |
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